Homeless man living in tiny house arrested tells his side of the story

SAN DIEGO – A group of San Diegans are outraged after building a tiny house for a homeless man only to have police arrest him for living in it.

Lisa Kogan was among those who raised money to have the tiny home built.

“What has really hit me in my heart is there’s a need out here, there’s a need for people to have shelter,” Kogan said.

Kogan saw a YouTube video about a man in Los Angeles who was building tiny homes for homeless people.

“I became inspired and I got my friends behind and donated money,” Kogan said. “We built it last month. It’s a little house, it’s moveable, it has wheels.”

Kogan wanted someone deserving. She found him.

“Red cleans up around here every day, Red’s a good guy,” said Anthony Brown, who sleeps in a tent across the street from a church on 16th Street.

Red, whose real name is Michael Clark, sleeps on the streets of downtown San Diego. He also works as a deacon at the International Love Ministries of God church, which helps the homeless downtown. On Saturday, Kogan gave Red his new tiny house.

The site is leaking up to 145,000 pounds per hour, according to the California Air Resources Board. In just the first month, that’s added up to 80,000 tons, or about a quarter of the state’s ordinary methane emissions over the same period. The Federal Aviation Administration recently banned low-flying planes from flying over the site, since engines plus combustible gas equals kaboom.

Steve Bohlen, who until recently was state oil and gas supervisor, can’t remember the last time California had to deal with a gas leak this big. “I asked this question of our staff of 30 years,” says Bohlen. “This is unique in the last three or four decades. This is an unusual event, period.”

Families living downwind of the site have also noticed the leak—boy, have they noticed. Methane itself is odorless, but the mercaptan added to natural gas gives it a characteristic sulfurous smell. Over 700 households have at least temporarily relocated, and one family has filed a lawsuit against the Southern California Gas Company alleging health problems from the gas. The gas levels are too low for long-term health effects, according to health officials, but the odor is hard to ignore.

Given both the local and global effects of the gas leak, why is it taking so long to stop? The answer has to do with the site at Aliso Canyon, an abandoned oil field. Yes, that’s right, natural gas is stored underground in old oil fields. It’s common practice in the US, but largely unique to this country. The idea goes that geological sites that were good at keeping in oil for millions of years would also be good at keeping in gas.

Algae Causing Sea Lion Brain Damage in California, Study Shows

byReuters

In this September 11, 2013 file photo, a sea lion scratches himself on Pier 39 at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California.DON EMMERT / AFP – Getty Images

WASHINGTON — A toxin produced by marine algae is inflicting brain damage on sea lions along California’s coast, causing neurological and behavioral changes that can impair their ability to navigate in the sea and survive in the wild, scientists said on Monday.

Brain scans on 30 California sea lions detected damage in the hippocampus, a brain structure associated with memory and spatial navigation, in animals naturally exposed to the toxin known as domoic acid, the researchers said.

Domoic acid mimics glutamate, a chemical that transmits nerve impulses in the brain, and leads to over-activation of hippocampus nerve cells and chronic epilepsy, according to Emory University cognitive psychologist Peter Cook, who worked on the study while at the University of California-Santa Cruz.

Another mass shooting attack targeted ‘gun-free zone’ of California, knowing citizens would be powerless to defend themselves… California is a human shooting range

Thursday, December 03, 2015 by: J. D. Heyes

(NaturalNews) At the time of this writing, news about the horrific mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., is still unfolding. There are a great many details that have not yet become clear, except that more than a dozen people have been killed, many more wounded, and that the shooters targeted the Inland Region Center, which provides assistance and care for disabled persons. Also, at this writing, a terrorism link has not yet been established or ruled out – understandable given the recent attacks in Paris, where ISIS-sponsored gunmen killed 130 people and wounded scores more.

Authorities are also fairly certain there was more than one gunman, that they were heavily armed, sporting military-style gear, hoods and semi-automatic rifles.

What is less certain – in fact, what is a downright mystery, both to me and tens of millions of my countrymen – is why, oh why, there continue to be “gun-free zones” in a nation whose founders sought to ensure that none of their progeny would be without a means to protect themselves and their families unless they made the personal choice to be vulnerable.

Doubling down on stupidity – and vulnerability

And honestly, California is one of the worst offenders, featuring strict gun control laws, byzantine gun licensure processes and a ruling class that is at once protected by men and women with guns but disavowed of any obligation to allow those they rule the same right.

Police are continuing to sort through evidence as I write this. They have yet to identify the perpetrators of this violence, let alone locate them. Soon, families of the victims will begin to mourn, with many angrily denouncing the assailants and, sadly, many calling for even more laws and regulations that will result in more deaths, more funerals and more heartbreak for more families in the future.

Like Parisians in November, San Bernardinians victimized by this latest attack had no choice but to cower in place and wait for armed police to rush in and save them. Only, as usual, armed police are never at the locations where the deranged come to slaughter, at least not initially. They do get there, eventually, but not before the maximum carnage is inflicted on bewildered and vulnerable citizens, many of whom became victims against their will.

Not that it made a difference in Paris, of course, where police, who are unarmed, themselves, have no option but to cower in the face of armed and determined criminals and terrorists.

The irony is not so sweet; in the U.S., following such incidents, cops that resemble soldiers fill the streets following such mass murder events. In France, actual soldiers, with body armor, are deployed.

Will anyone in power do the right thing – finally?

But what are they protecting, really? Because by the time these assets are deployed, the murderers are often long gone, and while they are most often found at a later date, in another location, the carnage has been committed, the damage done. And there is no going back in time to reverse it.

Yet our “leaders” keep doubling down on vulnerability. And stupidity. And taking chances with our lives. They force companies to spend scarce resources to provide employees with training in “active shooter drills,” and require them to “practice” responding to a situation that, honestly – unless you’ve been around “active shooting,” as in a war zone – most will have no idea how they’d really react.

How about, for a change, we alter our direction? How about instead of mandating more gun-free zones, we start building some “universal protection zones,” where citizens are free to utilize their Second Amendment right to protect themselves, and their spiritual right to self-preservation? We’ve done the vulnerability thing time and time and time again; let’s try the “self-defense” and “self-protection” thing, okay?

At the Inland Regional Center, where she’s a nurse, the staff works with clients and parents of clients who are sometimes angry. They have active-shooter drills every month or so.

“Drill started,” she texted her husband, Mark, around 11 a.m.

She walked to a window nearby and filmed a video as law enforcement sprinted toward the building.

Astronomically unlucky shooters?

Yes, this woman actually texted, “Drill started.” She recognized the pattern of movement that law enforcement has drilled countless times before. It’s the same thing they’ve been drilling for every single month.

What are the mathematical odds that a building where law enforcement has been “active shooter” drilling month after month would be randomly hit by active shooters? Nearly zero, of course. Similarly, of all the buildings in Los Angeles, how many are used by police as training grounds for monthly shooting drills? Virtually zero.

Maybe these active shooters are just incredibly, astronomically unlucky, huh? They chose to be active shooters in the exact same building where LA law enforcement has been training in active shooting drills for months!

Of course they know it’s going to happen! They’ve been drilling the scenario for months!

How blatant do these staged shootings have to get before people wake up and realize it’s all a tragic manipulation of public emotions in order to confiscate guns from private citizens and unleash an Obama totalitarian regime that will soon be handed off to Hillary Clinton for the “full tyranny” crackdown?

…………………………………………………………………………………….

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VVC students help law enforcement in campus drill

Zoom

| Victor Valley College school police officers gather outside the library after a a multi-agency active shooter training drill on Monday. American Medical Response, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department and the county Fire Department also participated. James Quigg, Daily Press

VICTORVILLE — San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputies, unloaded guns drawn, shouted “Get down! Get on the ground!” as they cleared the Victor Valley College library on Monday morning during an active shooter exercise.

Meanwhile, students with pretend injuries acted as victims of a campus shooting.

Staff and students received advance notice of the drill, in which the VVC Police Department joined the county Sheriff’s Department, Fire Department and American Medical Response.

As the sound of gunshots blared through a speaker playing a looped soundtrack, students of the VVC Corrections, Paramedic and Fire academies were given their assignments in the practice scenario.

About a half-dozen students sported torn and bloodied clothing and some fake flesh wounds. They awaited help until the all clear was given by officials, and students were able to assess and treat their wounds after escorting them from the building.

“Just as if this were a real shooting, what we’re doing now is pulling out everyone who’s not a suspect from the building,” campus police officer D.H. Jones said as the “victims” emerged from the library. They were led to the parking lot behind it, where emergency vehicles waited.

San Bernardino, CA — An active shooter situation is currently underway in the 1300 block of South Waterman Avenue in San Bernardino, California.

The shooting apparently took place at the Inland Regional Center, which is a facility that provides services for people who have developmental disabilities. The facility had just celebrated its Christmas party.

While details are scarce, what we have been told by authorities is that police are looking for 1-3 shooters and there are approximately 20 victims, with 12 being presumed dead.

According to KTLA, police have warned people not to talk to the media. At one point during the KTLA live stream, the reporter attempted to interview a witness and multiple officers rushed up and pushed the reporters and the witnesses apart. Below is a screen grab from the live stream showing confrontation.

After the shooting began, San Bernardino Police Department Lt. Richard Lawhead said that their SWAT team happened to be conducting training nearby. The team was suited, “ready to roll” and responded rapidly, Lawhead said.

California Drought Affects Winter Refuges for Migratory Birds

Sandhill cranes land in flooded fields at the Sandhill Crane Reserve near Thornton, California, Nov. 3, 2015. The state’s ongoing drought has left millions of waterfowl that migrate from northern climes to California with fewer places to land, seek food.

Reuters

November 07, 2015 10:43 AM

LODI, CALIFORNIA—With their red heads, 2.13-meter (7-foot) wingspan and a trilling call, migrating Sandhill Cranes provide a dramatic sunset spectacle as they land by the thousands in wetlands near Sacramento each night during the fall and winter.

But the state’s ongoing drought has left the cranes, along with millions of other waterfowl that migrate from Canada and other northern climes to spend the winter in California, with fewer places to land, threatening their health as they crowd in on one another to seek shelter and food.

“They’re left with fewer and fewer places to go, which will start to have impacts on their population,” said Meghan Hertel, who works on habitat issues for the Audubon Society in California. “They can die here from starvation or disease or be weaker for their flight back north.”

Beloved sight

The cranes are a beloved sight in California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys when they arrive each fall.

Tourists flock to see them as they take off en masse at dawn or land in a series of swooping, trilling groups as the sun goes down.

Monterey Bay anchovy numbers in decline, groups say

Anchovies fill a hatch aboard the El Dorado as workers unload the fishing boat at the Moss Landing Harbor on October 16, 2015. The boat is owned by Frank Aliotti Senior. (David Royal – Monterey Herald) ( David Royal )

Click photo to enlarge

Frank Aliotti Jr. moves a vacuum hose while unloadin anchovies from the El… ( David Royal )

SANTA CRUZ — For at least the past three years, humpback whales have been putting on a show in the Monterey Bay. Feasting and frisking, the 40-foot-long, 40-ton leviathans create in dizzying displays.

Locals have never seen anything like it. But things have changed.

“Since late September, the whale numbers have decreased, their behavior has changed and their food, anchovies, are less abundant,” said Nancy Black, marine biologist and owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch. “We were seeing carpets just thick of anchovies for almost a mile. Now all we’re seeing is spots.”

Whale watching tour companies and conservationists claim the anchovy population has “collapsed” due to environmental reasons so fishing limits remain too high.

Plenty of anchovies in Monterey Bay, but maybe not elsewhere

Monterey Fish Company worker Geronimo Hernandez feeds anchovies from a chute into iced bins while unloading the El Dorado fishing boat at the Moss Landing Harbor on October 16, 2015. The boat is owned by Frank Aliotti Senior. (David Royal – Monterey Herald)

A fisherman moves anchovies toward a vacuum tube inside the hatch aboard the El Dorado as workers unload the fishing boat at the Moss Landing Harbor on Friday. The boat is owned by Frank Aliotti Sr. David Royal — Monterey Herald

Monterey >> Things are shifting for fishermen in Monterey Bay.

Market squid are disappearing, and in their place, fishing boats are reeling in piles of anchovies.

But while they appear abundant, conservation groups warn that the forage fish may be at their lowest levels since the 1950s.

“It’s an anomalous year,” said Diane Pleschner-Steele, executive director of the California Wetfish Producers Association. “Typically these are not the kind of oceanographic conditions that anchovy like. But they are here and they’re really close to shore, which is why we’re having a spectacular year for whale watching.”

“There are thousands of tons,” said Sal Tringali, president of Monterey Fish Company, whose fishermen in Moss Landing are landing about 120 tons of anchovies each night and expect to do so for about another month. “There are all the anchovies you want out here.”

MOSS LANDING, Calif. – Several conservation groups and whale watching operators are very concerned about the anchovies in the Monterey Bay.

They’re worried they’re being over-fished, and want something to be done about it. Recently, fishermen have been hauling out 120 tons of anchovies every night, but those anchovies are some of the last along California’s coast.

Still, the groups want to make it clear they’re not against fishermen doing their job, they’re just concerned about a lack of data on the anchovy population and health.

Oceana’s Geoff Shester said there hasn’t been an analysis on anchovies in more than 20 years.

“The anchovy abundance out here, and off the entire state, has gotten to some of the lowest we’ve seen since the 1950s,” Shester said. “Scientists are calling it an actual collapse.”

Marine Biologist and Whale Watching Operator Nancy Black said marine animals and fishermen are both taking from the same source, driving down the anchovy population.

Although spawning salmon are still returning to British Columbia’s rivers – including some, surprisingly, to urban streams – early returns indicate another troubling year, despite some bright spots.

“It really is a mixed bag this year,” said Brian Riddell, president and CEO of the Pacific Salmon Foundation. “How the heck can we sum it up? I’d say it’s the good, the bad and the mysterious.”

There were good sockeye salmon returns to the Great Central Lake system on Vancouver Island and to the Nass River on the North Coast, he said.

But contrasting that were very poor returns on the Fraser River, where only about two million sockeye returned, far short of the more than six million predicted in preseason forecasts. Even more dramatic was the collapse of the pink salmon on the Fraser, with only about five million fish showing up when more than 14 million had been forecast.

The federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans declined to provide a spokesperson to talk about the salmon runs, saying it is too early to have firm numbers.

But Dr. Riddell said it is possible at this point to paint a broad picture, and the indication is that some stocks are in serious trouble.

file art … use copy from text …. A spawning sockeye salmon is seen making its way up the Adams River in Roderick Haig-Brown Provincial Park near Chase, B.C. Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2011. Predictions for this year’s salmon fishery on British Columbia’s Fraser River are so massive there’s no historical data to use to forecast the many millions of sockeye expected to return. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward ORG XMIT: CPT106

Photograph by: Jonathan Hayward , THE CANADIAN PRESS

The late South Thompson sockeye run has seen far fewer fish than expected, but the federal fisheries department says it’s still very preliminary with the final numbers not known until late December or January.

“In terms of the sockeye return, it’s much more disappointing than people were hoping to see this year,” said Greg Taylor, senior fisheries adviser for the Watershed Watch Salmon Society, a Vancouver-based non-profit organization that monitors wild salmon.

“They arrive in the spawning grounds in October, and the numbers they’re seeing are disturbingly low.”

Taylor noted that the Pacific Salmon Commission’s (PSC) pre-run estimate of 1.24 million late-run salmon was dropped to 200,000 for the entire Fraser River run, which includes the South Thompson, the Little Shuswap, Shuswap Lake and Adams River.

“It’s a very dramatic reduction.”

Although federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) officials cannot be interviewed about the preliminary numbers or the reasons for the smaller runs, a DFO update on Oct. 29 indicated that estimates of sockeye in the South Thompson were lower than expected.

September 21, 2015, 6:47PM

Commercial salmon fishing got off to a slow start in May due to windy weather and has stayed in a slump that local fishermen are blaming on unusually warm ocean water in one of the worst king salmon seasons in memory.

Some Bodega Bay-based anglers gave up rather than scramble for meager catches of underweight and undersized salmon, despite the relatively high dockside prices of $5 to $8 a pound.

Seafood distributors, meanwhile, are bringing in fresh, wild salmon from Fort Bragg and the Klamath River region in California to as far north as Alaska and Canada. “There’s always some fish around,” said Michael Lucas of North Coast Fisheries, a Santa Rosa wholesaler.

On Monday, local stores had salmon on ice for $16 to $20 a pound.

But for local fishermen, the season is a bust, with the catch through August at 30 percent of last year’s harvest and equally shy of the forecast for the current season.

Are You Prepared For The Coming Economic Collapse And The Next Great Depression?

By Michael Snyder, on November 8th, 2015

Have you noticed that seismic activity along the Ring of Fire appears to be dramatically increasing? According to Volcano Discovery, 39 volcanoes around the world have recently erupted, and 32 of them are associated with the Ring of Fire. This includes Mt. Popocatepetl which sits only about 50 miles away from Mexico City’s 18 million inhabitants. If you are not familiar with the Ring of Fire, it is an area roughly shaped like a horseshoe that runs along the outer perimeter of the Pacific Ocean. Approximately 90 percent of all earthquakes and approximately 75 percent of all volcanic eruptions occur along the Ring of Fire. Just within the last 24 hours, we have witnessed a 4.4, a 5.4 and a 5.7 earthquake in Alaska, a 6.8 earthquake in Chile and 20 earthquakes in Indonesia of at least magnitude 4.3. And as you will see below, this violent shaking along the Ring of Fire seems to continue a progression of major disasters that began back during the month of September.

For whatever reason, our planet suddenly seems to be waking up. Unfortunately, the west coast of the United States is one of the areas where this is being felt the most. The little city of San Ramon, California is about 45 miles east of San Francisco, and over the past several weeks it has experienced a record-breaking 583 earthquakes…

“It’s the swarm with the largest number of total earthquakes in San Ramon,” said USGS scientist David Schwartz, who is more concerned about the size of quakes than he is the total number of them. Still, the number tops the previous record set in 2003, when 120 earthquakes hit over 31 days, with the largest clocking in at a magnitude of 4.2.

Could this be a prelude to a major seismic event in California?

We shall see what happens.

Meanwhile, records are being shattered in the middle part of the country as well.

The state recorded its 587th earthquake of 3.0 magnitude or higher early this week, breaking the previous record of 585. That record was set for all of 2014, meaning that Oklahoma has now had more 3.0 magnitude or higher earthquakes so far in 2015 than it did in all of 2014. So far this year, E&E News reports, Oklahoma’s averaged 2.5 quakes each day, a rate that, if it continues, means the state could see more than 912 earthquakes by the end of this year.

Oklahoma has also experienced 21 4.0 magnitude or greater earthquakes so far this year — an increase over last year, which saw 14.

Starting with a magnitude-4.1 temblor at 5:11 a.m. close to the Oklahoma-Kansas border, the region experienced a series of six earthquakes within a 75-minute period Saturday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported on its website.

The largest earthquake Saturday morning was the 4.1, which had an epicenter nine miles northwest of Medford, Okla., 59 miles southwest of Wichita.

That was followed by five more quakes near Medford with magnitudes of 2.5, 2.8, 2.5, 3.1 and 2.9 – the last of which came at 6:24 a.m.

A seventh earthquake – this one a magnitude-4.2 temblor – was recorded at 12:29 p.m., 10 miles north-northwest of Medford.

So why aren’t more Americans alarmed that these records are being broken?

(KPIX 5) — This might come as a surprise to California natives in their 20s and early 30s: The state owns your DNA.

Every year about four million newborns in the U.S. get a heel prick at birth, to screen for congenital disorders, that if found early enough, can save their life.

Danielle Gatto barely remembers the nurse even mentioning test performed on her two daughters. “I don’t think that any woman is in a state of mind to sit down and start studying up on the literature they send you home with,” she said.

But later she was shocked to find, her daughters’ leftover blood was not thrown away. “The state collects the cards and then uses them in a database,” she said. The information is buried on page 12 of the brochure about the Newborn Screening Program that hospitals give parents of newborns before they go home.

Turns out a non-descript office building in Richmond contains the DNA of every person born in California since 1983. It’s a treasure trove of information about you, from the color of your eyes and hair to your pre-disposition to diseases like Alzheimer’s and cancer.

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